


Confession Begets Confession

by RedStarFiction



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9617477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedStarFiction/pseuds/RedStarFiction
Summary: I had a really lovely message from someone within the fandom who wanted a story about an argument between Frank and Claire about Brianna’s parentage. In the book it appears that Frank accepts Bree as his and moves on and also that Claire accepts Frank’s condition about Jamie and does not look back really until Frank is dead. However in light of this prompt I have written a scene that I feel could have occurred in canon had DG wished it to and had the character’s practised confession over repression!My prompt requested that Frank not be demonised and so I have avoided that. I hope the die-hard Frank-haters will forgive me! Thank you, Han xx





	

“Claire …”

“What Frank? What can you possibly say?”

“I didn’t expect her to visit you…”

“What if Brianna had been home?”

“I know and I am sorry …”

“You’re sorry?”

Claire shook her head and smiled a thin humourless smile

“I am. I did not mean to humiliate you and I would never risk Brianna’s feelings.”

He spread his hands, fine boned and delicate, tanned from days spent with Bree in the park during summer.

“They can’t come here Frank. Not now, not ever.”

“They? I …”

Frank began to protest, lifting his gaze to meet Claire’s but whatever he saw reflected back at him in her eyes stilled the words on his lips. They stood in silence for a moment, the sound of kids shouting in the park across the street the only noise in the room.

“I am sorry, Claire.”

He said finally and it was possible that the bitter edge Claire heard in his voice was her imagination.

“Should I take a hotel tonight?”

“No. Brianna has a history assignment due in and you promised to help her.”

Claire’s throat felt unnaturally dry as she spoke but did not crack. She was not working tonight but she would cook Bree’s dinner and then take a bath whilst Frank helped her with her work. There was no need to disrupt Bree’s routine. When it came to plausibly avoiding her husband, Claire had become rather adept. As had he, she realised with a quiet startle.

“I could take her with me? Let you have a little space…”

“No.”

The single word lashed out at Frank as though his wife wielded a bull-whip instead of a shield of studied indifference. Claire shook her head firmly and clenched her hands into fists to prevent him seeing them tremble. Frank pressed on with the same bloody single mindedness that he used to uproot the secrets of history from dusty old manuscripts, his brow lightly furrowed. 

“It would only be a couple of nights Claire. We can’t pretend to be just fine after today! It would be better for Brianna if …”

“You need to understand something Frank, I need you to understand what I am about to say with absolute certainty.”

Claire held up a hand and stared at him with large, luminous eyes which threatened a storm as surely as rain clouds on a July evening.

“You are free to leave this house whenever you please, just as I told your mistress today,”

Frank flinched a little at the word but Claire forged on regardless and to his credit he did not allow his eyes to leave her face.

“But whatever you choose, you will never take Brianna away from me.”

Claire watched the transformation that overcame his look, the hardening of his jaw and the tightening of the skin around his eyes and she was transported back through time. Two hundred and ten years to a dank prison dungeon facing a very different man who’s features had survived and passed down the generations to Frank where, Claire realised with a vicious jolt of satisfaction, they would end. The thought of Bree’s knife edge nose and flaming hair – gifts from another long dead solider, made Claire’s chest tighten but she refused to cry.

“Brianna is my daughter …”

Frank’s voice trembled slightly as he watched his wife’s lovers ghost flit across her damnable glass face. Claire shook her head at his words, momentarily mute. How could she trust her voice not to betray her and break like shattered crystal, cutting them both to ribbons with a name she had promised not to speak?

Misinterpreting her gesture as a refutation of his claim on Brianna, Frank clenched his left fist whilst jabbing an accusing finger at his wife with his right.

“You hardly even see that child, Claire! You care more for the nurturing of strangers than of your daughter!”

His words, sharp and cruel with their dregs of honesty, dragged her out of the swirling mists of grief and gave her something to cling to, no matter how much it hurt.

“That is not true.”

“Is it not? When did you last refuse a shift to spend time with her, hmm? Name one school play you have actually attended Claire!”

“I have a duty to the sick! Brianna understands …”

“She understands her mother prioritises everyone else over her. Dead as well as living.”

“What?”

The argument was spiralling out of control. Frank seldom raised his voice but he was quivering now with the forced suppression of his rage

“She wants to have a page-boy haircut and do you know why? Do you know why our little girl wants to cut her hair off? It’s because of the way you look when you plait it for her.”

“I…”

“She says that you look sad and she thinks it’s because of her hair! And what can I tell her?”

Frank’s voice cracked and Claire fought for words before finally managing

“What did you tell her?”

“That you’re tired. That it has nothing to do with her. That you adore her hair.”

“I do.”

Claire whispered and Frank slapped his fist into his waiting palm with enough force to make her jump

“Because of HIM! You don’t see that beautiful little girl’s hair, you see some bastard’s ginger tresses and you wound my child for it!”

“SHE IS NOT YOURS!”

Claire roared; caution and old promises momentarily forgotten as the hurtful truth of his words cut through her carefully constructed armour. Frank’s hands on her arms brought her anger to a peak and she thrashed wildly against him.

“You don’t know what we went through! You didn’t know Jamie and you will never replace him! Never! She is his! I am his! We are not yours!”

Claire spat and finally Frank shook her at the same time as his voice reached her, his cheek pressed against hers as he whispered hoarsely in her ear.

“Fine! Fine Claire! If you are to be believed then Brianna is the daughter of some long dead, arrogant fool who was too wrapped up in the glory of battle and his duty to strangers to care for his child or his wife and left you both to the mercy of time. So maybe the two of you really were as perfectly suited to each other as you continue to believe.”

He released her then and stepped back wiping a shaking hand across his lips.

“But I am here and I am trying to raise that little girl and I will not leave her and whether you like it or not, I am taking Brianna to a hotel for the night and helping her with her homework and tomorrow, I will take her to school. You can collect her at the end of the day when you have had a chance to collect yourself and regain a sense of reason.”

“I have work tomorrow night.”

Claire pushed the words through her teeth but rather than driving home his point, Frank let his head droop and shook it slowly from side to side.

“Then I will pick her up from school and we will come home together. Will you be here to make her breakfast the following morning?”

“Yes.”

Claire let the word fall from her mouth without thought. The hole which had opened in her core with the loss of Jamie had never completely closed, but now in the wake of her rage it yawned wide and cavernous and Claire found herself teetering on a precipice of despair and one wrong move would pitch her head first in and she would likely never recover her sure footing again.

She had not heard Frank move but when his voice came from the doorway she was not surprised either.

“It will get easier Claire, the loss of him. But please do not project the pain you feel onto Brianna. She doesn’t deserve it … and neither do I.”

After he left, Claire sat on the floor and placed her head against her knees and breathed slowly and evenly until the tears stopped rolling down her cheeks and she could trust herself not to sob his name aloud. Jamie.


End file.
